Friday, September 4, 2009

- Friday Night Supper

Google “eating dinner together” with “student achievement” and you’ll come up with a raft of reasons why sitting around the table with your family every night is a sound parenting practice. But I can honestly say that Friday Night Supper was not designed to enhance anyone’s grades in school.

The original Friday Night Supper was my Mom’s way of taking a break from cooking one night a week since we rarely ate out. So, in my teen years anyway, my brother and I were on our own in the kitchen. My supper of choice was pancakes, made with Bisquick of course. Sometimes I opted for mock Crepes Suzette cribbed from an old, yellowing cookbook with its covers falling off from many years of use. I don’t remember its title, but it was thick as a New York phone book and inscribed to my mom “from your starving husband,” or words to that effect … a true relic from the early years of their marriage.

I still whip up crepes and orange sauce from time to time, using a recipe that has never before been written down and the battered Flint pancake turner that my brother Art gave me as a wedding gift. Another relic, it has been mightily used and abused in its time. On one memorable occasion, Art and I were bickering as Mom tried to fix dinner. She cautioned us to stop, which we ignored. Repeatedly. Finally fed up, she raised her voice and intoned, “Cut it!” while whacking the edge of the counter with the pancake turner. The handle shattered. Art and I stared at each other, eyes wide, then erupted in snorts as we tried to keep from laughing. Mom turned, the mangled Flint in her upraised hand and … laughed out loud. At which point we joined her, laughing until tears came to our eyes and our sides ached as we gasped for air. I don’t know if I was actually supposed to keep the Flint when Art gave it to me years later … I so wanted it that I never asked, and I’ve used it to flip hundreds, if not thousands, of pancakes since. It’s the best spatula I’ve ever used.

Fast forward to the 1990s: Friday Night Supper was my way of getting out of cooking, too. As a working mom, the end of the week marked the ebb tide of my energy and cooking ambition. I would head to the grocery store after work to do the shopping for a weekend’s worth of eating, but it was Ma Ukrops who did the actual cooking for the Friday night meal. The shopping list rarely varied: a rotisserie chicken, a loaf of crusty bread, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and avocado. Whoever packed the groceries was asked to place the bread atop the chicken nested in its plastic shell, the better to warm the bread up on the drive home.

I rationalized this abdication of my cooking responsibilities thusly: what is a recipe but an assemblage of ingredients after all? And the proof was in the pudding … my kids rarely missed being home for Friday Night Supper. In fact, they often brought friends to share the meal with us. Heather and Jessica (shown here at Melissa's wedding) became stalwart fans. The resultant lack of leftovers was more than offset by the gift of their presence as we sat at the table talking on and on, long after the eating was done.

Friday Night Supper (Williamsburg Style)

1 warm rotisserie chicken (from Ukrops, if you have one in your own hometown)1 fresh loaf of crusty break (Ecce Panis Neo-Tuscan Boule, if you can find it)Fresh tomatoes (whatever variety is ripest)Fresh basil (don’t count the cost, you’re worth it)Fresh mozzarella (the softer the better)Avocado (yielding ever so slightly to a discerning thumb)Unio olive oil (you must have this on hand at home)Kosher salt (another staple)Fresh lemon (ditto)

Slice enough bread to serve the assembled diners, wrap in foil and put in a 350 ovenSlice tomatoes and mozzarella, top with basil leaves and a drizzle of olive oilPeel and slice avocado(s), drizzle with lemon juiceRequest the services of your favorite carver to dismantle the chickenProvide ample salt and pepper for seasoning at the table, along with olive oil for dunking the bread

2 comments:

I just read your wonderful blog! You have such an authentic writing voice, slightly wry and humorous and pragmatic, sweet and commonsensical and very smart. I look forward to reading your blog every day . . . Charlie and I miss you. Cheers, Deborah

It's a long way from Williamsburg, Virginia to the Texas Hill Country, but I've never looked back. Instead, my days are full of stitching, natural dyeing, assemblage art appreciation, grandparenting, cactus whacking, Americana music and Tex-Mex cooking ... not to mention wildflowers and critters.
As local bard Robert Earl Keen says, "The road goes on forever & the party never ends."